Personally, and this goes for a lot of people in my guild, I’d rather kill something next month after learning it together than skipping ahead and doing it this week with strangers. Somewhere along the line the sense of accomplishment and community got replaced with a sense of entitlement. Faster equals higher self-worth.

So far Blizzard has demonstrated that they are on a 2 year cycle for new content. I’m not quite sure why so many feel like they need to finish it in the next month.

Me, I like the smell of the roses.

I don’t think raiders who join more hardcore guilds are betrayers and I don’t blame them for wanting to play the game the way it’s presented. But I think more diverse guilds are more fun to be in, personally. Plus if you can’t raid for a few weeks or your class is underpowered for a patch, you don’t find yourself socially excluded.

But we try to find a better job if we aren’t satisfied with the current one (or at least we should). And nobody (usually) sees you as a betrayer if you take an opportunity and switch job.

There’s also a kind of confidence trick going on where if enough people really believe that the best way to pursue progression is by finding a hardcore guild then … it becomes true. Even though it makes a lot of players unhappy and pressures them to play on schedules that aren’t ideal.

It’s also much easier to advertise a really focussed guild to players, as opposed to ‘we’re friendly to people who don’t annoy us, mature, a bit hardcore but not much, plus we like playing on friday nights and sometimes swear in danish’.

iRL, it’s a bit less clear because often people are following multiple goals so they’re balancing different priorities. Lots of people do jobs they don’t love because it’s a) all they can get b) need the money c) need the experience d) fits in with childcare arrangements etc etc

If that kills of guilds, and it does, then it’s not the fault of the people who leave. It’s the fault of Blizzard who creates a game that requires an insane amount of organization from the raid leaders to allow others to beat their content. Raids in the current form should be replaced with more casual friendly content. And I don’t mean easier to beat, but easier to organize. The current heroics show that 5 man bosses can also be more complex than patchwerk but 5 man groups can be formed ad-hoc and don’t need a fix schedule. Just create an epic difficulty level which is even more demanding and reward it with raid level epic.

But all around us raiding guilds grow, prosper, fall apart, die. We’re a backwater server progression-wise, so those who are most hardcore usually split their guilds and then often leave the realm for a more progressed one.

It will be interesting to see how guild leveling changes this. Will people be just as willing to break apart their level 25 guild and start from scratch? Will people pick up the torch instead? Will people want to start grinding guild rep, which is not exactly the fastest process in the world? I wonder if that will have any impact.